- Anthony Newley, Oliver Twist, 1948. Alfie Bass and Reg Varney, future UK TV sitcom stars – The Army Game for Alfie and On The Buses for Reg – were in the mix for The Artful. Dodger. Indeed, director David Lean was preparing to test them when his wife, actress Kay Walsh, rang him. “I’ve got your Dodger.” She had just seen Tony Newley explode in her Vice-Versa film. Lean shaved the boy’s head and stuck a walnut up a nostril “to make me look less handsome.” Every day, Newley’s mother woke him at 5am so he could cycle from Hackney to Liverpool Street station to catch a train to Uxbridge, to meet a bus for Pinewood to be in make-up by 8.30 – “when I felt like I’d done a day’s work already!” Newley revived of the Oliver musical as Fagin in Britain in 1995.
Birth year: 1921Death year: 1987Other name: Casting Calls: 1